How to Import From China? ?Source Products From Chinese Suppliers.

This article is original from bigbansourcing.com blog by click: https://www.bigbansourcing.com/import-china-source-products-chinese-suppliers/

Nowadays, there are more and more people import products from China, then resell oversea, especially on Amazon, Ebay, and other online stores. It is easy to find Chinese suppliers on website, such as Alibaba, Globalsource, Made-in-China, and as well as in Canton Fair which is host twice a year.

When sourcing products from China, there are some questions you might face, such as:

How to find reliable suppliers?

Anything you should pay more attention to?

How to avoid the traps?

…

So my goal is to offer some tips for starting an importing & e-commerce business from scratch which you may face to get a clue.

1.‘Guanxi’

Build a relationship with your Chinese suppliers is very important.

In China, business is relationship in someway. We say ‘ Two heads are better than one ‘. When you have built a mutual-trust relationship with a China Suppliers, the cooperation has just truly started. 

And as it goes longer, the cooperation will be better and better. Just like when a person is nice to you and respect you, in return, you are willing to help him too, wouldn’t you? So Be nice and friendly to the suppliers.

Build good relationship with Chinese Suppliers and grow healthy together

      Build good relationship with Chinese Suppliers and
?                    grow healthy together

Build good relationship with Chinese Suppliers and grow healthy together

Most of Chinese Suppliers are focusing on building long-term relationship with you for a long-term prize together to the far future. So if you are happy with them, tell them!

Do not limit your communication with just email. When found a supplier seems interesting, get their phone No. and call them. You will find the language barrier not be a problem.

And if you have got a chance, meet them face to face, through which you will find it is nice and will help you to build better relationship. And the suppliers will pay more attention to your orders in return.

2. Negotiation

It is not just about getting the lowest price.

You get what you pay for! The key point is to get a balance between the price and quality.

                                              negotiation with win-win

When sourcing products in China, try to find out the cost of raw materials, labor cost, as well as other related cost, from which you could get a clue what the price should be. After that when you get a quote from Chinese suppliers, you would know whether the prices are reasonable or not.

In addition, if you can get more information about their products, you would get to tell the differences. In this way, how good their service are would show to you too.

And, like the word in Chinese “Guan Xi关系” expressed, the Chinese suppliers all wish to build long-term win-win business relationship with you. The better relationship is the better price you could get.

Suggestion:

Do not take the lowest price as your sole purpose. In China, there is no lowest but only the lower and lower prices. If you get one, it tells that you need to be careful. Because the lowest price sometimes comes together with risk in quality, reputation or other services.

So find reliable suppliers to cooperate and grow healthily together.                                     

3. Quality control

Quality is the life of business.

Quality control is one of the most important process in importing business. It is very risky to import products from China without quality control. If you imported a bulk of products, which proved to be trash, even though with a very cheap price, it is still a big waste.

In order to get more orders, some factories may quote with very low profit. However, some of them are actually deadly hope to get it increased. Some factories may find a breakout through cost saving, like modify some details of the products without authorization, e.g. change the packing, ingredient etc. If the problem not found until the product arrived in your country, it would be too late for any remedy actions. In this case, we need to control the quality from the very beginning, and find out any problems that may happen before shipping and kill any of them within the factory. All in all do not wait until the products in your warehouse, or even already in the hand of the consumers. Control the quality during the production is much more effective than after the shipment.

Suggestion:

1.）Details are very important!

Make sure your products specification clear and definite, and well understood by the suppliers! Sometimes when the suppliers do not fully understand you, they might manufacture the products based on the cost, which will lead to that the products you receive are different from what you want.

When describing the specification to the suppliers, use short sentence, and directly to the point, also try to explain your requirements in different ways so that to make sure them understand it.

Quality Control before Shipment

2.）Minimizing your risk by starting small order or sample test first before the bulk production.

3.）Do not pay the balance before checking the quality.

You could also ask Chinese colleagues or the third party to inspect the quality.

4. Logistics

Combine several products source from China to one shipment.

If you are a home based small business owner, you might import small quantities with just several hundred items for each category from different suppliers. In this case, you could ask them to transport their products to the same warehouse in China, and so then load in one container for shipment to save lots of sea freight fees.

Moreover, it is better to avoid shipping the products during or near the Chinese New Year Holiday. Because the sea freight usually charges much higher than other period. In addition, the shipping space might not be available either.

Related to Tips for importing from China during the Chinese New Year

Suggestion:

1.) Duty

Duty rate is related with the H.S.Code and which country the products are imported from, as well as the value you declare. Some importers lower the value of the cargoes when declare, which could be taken into consideration. And the paper work is very easy to deal with too. You could ask the shipping agents or the Chinese suppliers to complete the paper for you.

2.) Ship the cargoes as big quantity as you could. For Example, the average freight charge for each piece of 40’GP is much lower than ship in two 20’GP.

5. Safe Paymemt

The payment method for importing from China usually used are Letter of Credit(L/C), Telegram transfer（T/T）, Document Against Payment(D/P), Document Against Acceptance(D/P), west union and PayPal, etc.

Suggestion and IMPORTANT:

1.) There were many cases happened that email boxes of China suppliers and importers been attacked, which result in their emails or bank accounts been falsified and payment of goods been beguiled.

To avoid this, when get the bank accounts, double check with the supplier in different ways, such as telephone or other communication methods.